Abstract:
Earthquakes are one of Mother Nature's more awe-inspiring forces; in a matter of minutes buildings may be leveled, bridges may collapse, while humans can do nothing to stop them and only so much to prepare for them. While scientists are working to understand more and more about these fascinating phenomena there are still many questions to be answered and aspects to explore. For the regular Joe however, very little of the current information on earthquakes may be known; sure the Earth shakes every now and again in certain areas and are measured by something called the Richter Scale, but what does that really mean? This project addresses both of the afore mentioned topics. Through research and study of selected recent earthquakes, the data available will be analyzed in order to obtain useful scientific information. From this a small GIS (Global Information Systems) map has been created through the use of the computer program ArcMap. Also, an earthquake lab has been developed for use in the Geology 101 classes in order to bring pertinent information to non-geologists and so give them a more complete understanding of events for when they hear about the next earthquake on the news.
